"Hello! Ma Baby" is a

Tin Pan Alley Tin Pan Alley was a collection of History of music publishing, music publishers and songwriters in New York City that dominated the American popular music, popular music of the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Originally ...

song written in 1899 by the songwriting team of

Joseph E. Howard Joseph Edgar Howard (February 12, 1870May 19, 1961) was an American Broadway theatre, Broadway composer, lyricist, Libretto, librettist, and performer. A famed member of Tin Pan Alley along with wife and composer Ida Emerson as part of the song-w ...

and Ida Emerson, known as "Howard and Emerson". Its subject is a man who has a girlfriend he knows only through the

telephone A telephone, colloquially referred to as a phone, is a telecommunications device that enables two or more users to conduct a conversation when they are too far apart to be easily heard directly. A telephone converts sound, typically and most ...

. At the time, telephones were relatively novel, present in fewer than 10% of U.S. households, and this was the first well-known song to refer to the device. Additionally, the word "

Hello Hello is a salutation or greeting in the English language. It is first attested in writing from 1826. Early uses ''Hello'', with that spelling, was used in publications in the U.S. as early as the 18 October 1826 edition of the '' Norwich Cou ...

" itself was primarily associated with telephone use after Edison's utterance—by 1889, " Hello Girl" was slang for a telephone operator—though it later became a general greeting for all situations. The song was first recorded by Arthur Collins on an Edison 5470 phonograph cylinder. The song may be best known today as the introductory song in the famous

Warner Bros. Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (WBEI), commonly known as Warner Bros. (WB), is an American filmed entertainment studio headquartered at the Warner Bros. Studios complex in Burbank, California and the main namesake subsidiary of Warner Bro ...

cartoon ''

One Froggy Evening ''One Froggy Evening'' is a 1955 American Technicolor animated musical short film written by Michael Maltese and directed by Chuck Jones, with musical direction by Milt Franklyn. The short, partly inspired by a 1944 Cary Grant film entitled ''O ...

'' (1955), sung by the character later dubbed Michigan J. Frog and high-stepping in the style of a

cakewalk The cakewalk was a dance developed from the "prize walks" (dance contests with a cake awarded as the prize) held in the mid-19th century, generally at get-togethers on black slave plantations before and after emancipation in the Southern Unit ...

Influence

Charles Ives Charles Edward Ives (; October 20, 1874May 19, 1954) was an American modernist composer, actuary and businessman. Ives was among the earliest renowned American composers to achieve recognition on a global scale. His music was largely ignored d ...

's 1906 composition ''

Central Park in the Dark ''Central Park in the Dark'' is a musical composition by Charles Ives for chamber orchestra. It was composed in 1906 and has been paired with '' The Unanswered Question'' as part of "Two Contemplations" and with ''Hallowe'en'' and ''The Pond'' i ...

'', it is quoted frequently. The short piano piece ''

The Little Nigar ''The Little Nigar'' (CD 122, L. 114) is the original title by composer Claude Debussy for a short piece for piano, composed in 1909 for a piano method and published the same year. It was later also published as a single piece, entitled ''The L ...

'' (''Le petit nègre'') by

Claude Debussy Achille Claude Debussy (; 22 August 1862 – 25 March 1918) was a French composer. He is sometimes seen as the first Impressionism in music, Impressionist composer, although he vigorously rejected the term. He was among the most influe ...

from 1909 features a melody very similar to "Hello! Ma Baby" and may have been inspired by the song. It was also featured in "She's Only a Build in a Girdled Cage", an episode of ''

F Troop ''F Troop'' is a satirical American television Western sitcom about U.S. soldiers and American Indians in the Wild West during the 1860s. The series originally aired for two seasons on ABC. It debuted in the United States on September 14, 1965 ...

''. The 1987 American

space opera Space opera is a subgenre of science fiction that emphasizes Space warfare in science fiction, space warfare, with use of melodramatic, risk-taking space adventures, relationships, and chivalric romance. Set mainly or entirely in outer space, i ...

comedy film The comedy film is a film genre that emphasizes humor. These films are designed to amuse audiences and make them laugh. Films in this genre typically have a happy ending, with dark comedy being an exception to this rule. Comedy is one of the o ...

Spaceballs ''Spaceballs'' is a 1987 American space opera parody film co-written, produced and directed by Mel Brooks. It primarily parodies the original ''Star Wars'' trilogy, but also other popular franchises such as ''Star Trek'', '' Alien'', '' The Wi ...

'' featured an uncredited recording (from ''

'') of part of the song sung by a

xenomorph The xenomorph (also known as a Xenomorph XX121, ''Internecivus raptus'', ''Plagiarus praepotens'', or simply the alien or the creature)Alien: The Weyland-Yutani Report is a fictional parasitoid, endoparasitoid Extraterrestrials in fiction, extra ...

. In the 2018 video game ''

Red Dead Redemption 2 ''Red Dead Redemption 2'' is a 2018 action-adventure game developed and published by Rockstar Games. The game is the third entry in the ''Red Dead'' series and a prequel to the 2010 game ''Red Dead Redemption''. The story is set in a fictiona ...

'', the song is performed by the character Robin Koninsky at the Théâtre Râleur in the fictional city of Saint Denis.

Sheet music and the Warner Bros. acquisition of the song

The

sheet music Sheet music is a handwritten or printed form of musical notation that uses musical symbols to indicate the pitches, rhythms, or chords of a song or instrumental musical piece. Like its analogs – printed Book, books or Pamphlet, pamphlets ...

was published by T. B. Harms & Co., which was acquired by

before the stock market crash of 1929 (during the advent of the "

Talkies A sound film is a Film, motion picture with synchronization, synchronized sound, or sound technologically coupled to image, as opposed to a silent film. The first known public exhibition of projected sound films took place in Paris in 1900, bu ...

" era of

cinema Cinema may refer to: Film * Film or movie, a series of still images that create the illusion of moving image ** Film industry, the technological and commercial institutions of filmmaking ** Filmmaking, the process of making a film * Movie theate ...

References

External links

Sheet music for "Hello! Ma Baby"
as published by T.B. Harms & Co. (as stored by the

Duke University Libraries Duke University Libraries is the library system of Duke University, serving the university's students and faculty. The Libraries collectively hold some 6 million volumes. The collection contains 17.7 million manuscripts, 1.2 million public docum ...

). {{authority control 1899 songs Songs written by Joseph E. Howard Rags Songs about telephone calls Looney Tunes songs